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Squall posted:I didn't vote for Biden in 2020 and instead threw it at a third party that my state didn't even bother to count because Biden loving sucks and the four years that has followed has only made me glad that I am not responsible for this fuckwad. If not voting for Biden results in a second Trump term, then that's not my fault and gently caress you. The logic of responsibility here isn't coherent. You say if you had chosen to vote for Biden, you would've been morally responsible for his election victory and what he did. That makes sense, because by choosing to vote for him, you made his victory more likely than if you had made a different choice. By the same logic, if you choose not to vote for him in 2024, you're morally responsible for the outcome of that choice, compared to others you could have made - if Trump's elected, and you could have stopped it by voting for him against him, then of course it's your "fault." We're responsible for the events that our actions make more or less likely, whether that action is voting or declining to vote. If helping Biden win in 2020 would've made you partially responsible for what happened when he won, then declining to help him in 2024 makes you partially responsible for what happens if he doesn't win. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 14:38
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Squall posted:I'm sorry that I didn't vote for the blue senile rapist to stop the red senile rapist but I still am not voting for him in 2024. I'm not asking for an apology, I also didn't vote for Biden in 2020 and won't in 2024. The way you're thinking about responsibility here - not you, but the way you're thinking about responsibility in the post I quoted - appears to be dumb. By not-voting you accept as much responsibility over the outcome as by voting, because either way you're making a choice about how to use your power as a voter in a way that foreseeably makes one outcome more likely than another.
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Feb 14, 2024 15:07
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Squall posted:I voted, just not for either major party candidate. So did I - and we are both responsible for the outcomes of those votes. If my third-party vote makes Trump more likely to be President than other options available to me, I'm responsible for that, and it's the same with you. I don't see any consistent theory of moral responsibility in the way you talk about it.
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Feb 14, 2024 15:22
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Squall posted:So your moral stance is that it doesn't much matter what you do, you're either for Joe or for Trump. No, my moral stance is that we're all responsible for the foreseeable consequences of our actions. So for you to say "voting for Biden would make me more responsible for what he does" is correct, but to say "declining to vote for Biden does not increase my responsibility for what Trump does" is incorrect. hooman posted:I'm unsure of this reasoning because it assumes a binary choice, candidate A OR B. This stops working when there is a third Candidate, C. If I vote for Candidate A and Candidate B or C wins, am I responsible the actions of the winning candidate B or C? If you could have made a choice that would make B/C more likely to lose, and instead you made a different choice, you're obviously responsible for the outcome that you made more likely. I'm not assuming that elections are binary - you are treating moral responsibility as if it is binary. quote:What if there are 12 candidates? Am I always morally responsible for whatever happens by voting for my preferred candidate rather than the candidate who came second Yes, if you're choosing between different votes that make different outcomes more likely, you're responsible for the outcomes that you know you're making more likely and for the outcomes that you know you're making less likely. You are responsible for the foreseeable outcome of how you use your power as a voter. quote:(even if I couldn't know who that would be in advance) We're responsible for the foreseeable consequences of our actions, not the unforeseeable ones. That's life. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 15:37
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Sure, but earlier you were talking about Trump replacing Biden like it's such an obviously bad thing that you have to preemptively disavow responsibility for it. Squall posted:If not voting for Biden results in a second Trump term, then that's not my fault and gently caress you. If you've now changed to "sure, by choosing to withhold my vote from Biden I might increase my responsibility for Trump becoming President instead, but it's impossible to tell whether this is good or bad" then that's a consistent theory of responsibility. hooman posted:By this logic, do you believe anyone who declined to vote for Donald Trump is responsible for what Biden has done? (This isn't a gotcha I'm trying to understand this.) Yes, they are obviously more responsible for Biden's victory and subsequent administration than if they had voted for Trump. They could have made a choice that obviously made Biden's victory less likely, they didn't make that choice, the way responsibility works here is obvious. quote:I am responsible for making the good outcome of A more likely, yes. Whether the bad outcome of B/C happens I have not controlled. Am I responsible for both? If you could have exerted greater control over whether B or C wins, and you chose not to exert that control because you voted for A instead, you're responsible for any foreseeable outcome from that. We are responsible for the foreseeable outcomes of our actions. If compared to different choices available to us, our actions will clearly make one outcome more likely and another less likely, we are responsible for that. This logic is the same whether we're talking about driving drunk or making a political donation or casting a vote. The problem here appears to be thinking of responsibility as binary (my hands are either clean or unclean) or thinking of not voting/protest voting as some sort of abstention that erases responsibility rather than a deliberate choice that can be morally evaluated just like voting for candidate R or candidate D. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 15:54
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Bar Ran Dun posted:The consequences of our actions are very often not foreseeable or only foreseeable in rather limited ways. Obviously. That's why I said "foreseeable consequences", because that's only a subset of "all consequences." Rappaport posted:Europoster here: We just had our presidential election and there was a clown car of 9 candidates because most established parties ran their own guy or gal. It was pretty clear that the Left Alliance lady didn't have a chance of getting elected, but some people still voted for her because she was the most left-wing slash progressive candidate available. Also the youngest. I honestly don't see how that voting choice implicates people for the actions of the neo-lib poo poo-bird who wound up winning, the whole idea of the multi-party system is (in theory anyway) voting for your values. If they could have made a different choice that made the poo poo-bird less likely to win, and they didn't, they're responsible for that discrepancy. quote:Anyway, the moral logic you've outlined seems to boil I did not vote for our neo-lib candidate for president, but due to not gaming my vote, I am morally culpable for his existence? If you could have made him less likely to win by making a different choice, then you're responsible for that consequence of your decision, just like you're responsible for all other consequences of your voting decision, positive and negative. quote:This is even worse in the election for our parliament \If I cannot predict what my vote will even accomplish, as you say I cannot foresee what my vote will do, and the logic behind my vote seems like it doesn't need to be gamified 100%; just vote whomever you please. If you really truly can't discern the consequences of your choices at all, then you have no power and no responsibility. You're not actually making choices at that point. quote:. Especially in states where one party dominates; abstaining from voting won't have a mathematically significant effect in that scenario, so how is the non-voter responsible, morally, for things they can't even meaningfully effect? I don't understand how you could have this question after reading the post you're quoting. If your vote doesn't change the likelihood of a candidate winning, then it's a meaningless action with no moral weight - unless you say there could be consequences like boosting the profile of a third party, or sending a message to candidates or other voters, etc. In that case you are morally responsible for those outcomes which you chose to make.more or less likely. If your vote changes the likelihood of a candidate winning, you're morally responsible for that. I'm not telling anyone how to vote, just explaining that the principle underlying our moral responsibility for the consequences of our actions is the same for voting/not voting for a candidate as donating/not donating to a fund or buckling/not buckling your seatbelt etc. if you know that what you're doing will change what might happen in the future, compared to other choices you could make, you are obviously responsible for those changes.
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Feb 14, 2024 17:40
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Rappaport posted:Right, but my point was that if either due to lack of information (which of our parties will go into the coalition) or lack of political power (Dem voter in a burning red state), then the voting decision's moral implications are different. You're explaining very obvious ideas that were already accounted for. What I said, what you quoted, was: "Yes, if you're choosing between different votes that make different outcomes more likely, you're responsible for the outcomes that you know you're making more likely and for the outcomes that you know you're making less likely." The scenarios you describe - a voter who can't affect the outcome, a voter who can't foresee the consequences of their choices - are clearly excluded. If you have no power - because of electoral impotence or political ignorance - you have no responsibility. quote:Maybe we're just agreeing with each other at this point though, but I've seen the politicians-are-owed-your-support reasoning expressed quite often out in the wild too, I have not said or implied that any politician is owed anyone's vote. I think that idea is incoherent. What I've said is that we are all responsible for the foreseeable consequences of our choices. Voting choices obey that logic whether it's a lesser-evil vote or a protest vote or a total abstention from voting or anything else. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 18:01
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theCalamity posted:I don't know why but this just feels inherently undemocratic and complicating a simple action. I really don't see how it could get any simpler. When you choose to vote one way, as opposed to another way, if it clearly changes what might happen in the future, then you're responsible for those changes.
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Feb 14, 2024 19:34
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theCalamity posted:When you vote for someone, yes. But when you start saying that if you decline to vote for one person over another, you’re responsible for those changes, that’s when it starts getting iffy with me, especially if there are other options at play. Yes, we are responsible for the changes caused by our actions. If you could make an event less likely, and you instead chose to make a different event less likely, you're responsible for the consequences of that choice. quote:That’s where it feels in Democratic to me. Why do you think you feel that way? quote:You’re trying to whittle away at the options people can make Very bizarre claim, not sure what to make of it. I haven't said anyone should or shouldn't, much less can or can't, do anything at all. Just talking about how responsibility works. I do have intuitions about how people should vote in specific elections and in general but I haven't shared those in this thread. I just disagree with any talk of moral responsibility which ignores or obscures the basic idea that we are responsible for the expected outcomes of our actions, nothing more and nothing less. volts5000 posted:Because there's no talk of collectivizing. What organization are we forming? How are we making our demands known to the political parties? There's none of that! It's just people saying "Oh I'm totally voting for Cornel West. That'll show 'em!" I would really love to see the development of "voter's unions" who don't run candidates but do make demands of candidates in exchange for guaranteeing to provide/withhold their votes. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 20:11
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theCalamity posted:If my goal is to not have monstrous things happen, then voting for monstrous people who will do monstrous things is not closer to getting my goal. Even if one does less monstrous things than the other, it is not closer to my goal especially when the lesser monster shows no sign of lessening their monstrous habits. That is true - if your only moral barometer is "stop all monstrosities" then you have no power to make a morally meaningful choice, and therefore no responsibility. By this standard it is almost certain you will never accomplish anything morally useful in your entire life - or you will end all monstrosities. If "less monstrosities" is morally valuable, then your decision to vote for the less-monstrous candidate makes "less monstrosities" more likely than if you hadn't voted, and you're responsible for that. In comparison, choosing not to vote makes "less monstrosities" less likely than if you'd voted for the less monstrous candidate, and you're responsible for that. And if you vote for the more monstrous candidate, then you're making "more monstrosities" more likely than either of the above choices, and again you are responsible for that. Similarly, if your only moral barometer is "stop all car accidents," then it doesn't make a difference whether you drive drunk or not - either way there will still be car accidents. You do not have the power to change that. But your choice of whether you'll drive drunk or not, that'll have a notable effect on the expected amount of car accidents in the near future, and if that amount has moral value to you, then there's still a moral stake to your decision. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 20:37
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theCalamity posted:Less monstrosities in a vacuum is good, but like I said, if the one who is doing less evil is still committed to doing evil, then it's not morally valuable. What's the difference between "good" and "morally valuable"? Bel Shazar posted:Oh I wholly agree we have no CONTROL, but we're still responsible for the government. People are only responsible for what they can control. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 20:59
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Bel Shazar posted:I respectfully disagree. In the end, it's a democracy, flawed and corrupted and forged on innumerable lies and depravations... but it's our democracy. Is it a democracy? You just said: Bel Shazar posted:Oh I wholly agree we have no CONTROL... That's not a democracy, right? Democracy means the people are in control. If it's only nominally a democracy, and people don't have any control over the government, then I don't see how it being a nominal democracy causes actual moral responsibility. If it's a real democracy, where an ordinary person can have some control over what the government does, they're obviously responsible for what's within their control. All of what's in their control, and nothing more.
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Feb 15, 2024 03:46
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volts5000 posted:I made the point that social changes are made incrementally through hard work (a series of minor successes and failures) that take decades. The user didn't say all social change works this way, the user said some social change works that way - "There are many historical examples of the social environment changing rapidly or top-down changes in policy spurring social change to happen much faster than it would have otherwise." volts5000 posted:When I pointed it out that you were being dismissive, you agreed. Here the user was very obviously being sarcastic. You're misreading their posts in a bizarre and uncharitable way. Social change is sometimes very rapid and not gradual, even though decades or centuries of prior work enabled that rapid transition.
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Feb 15, 2024 16:43
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Tatsuta Age posted:Am I misreading something or is your final paragraph saying, unironically, that Trump might be "change [...] for the better" on specifically the issue of the ongoing genocide? I am pretty sure you are misreading and the change they're describing is "Democratic party moves left on Palestine to attract voters who won't vote for a pro-IDF candidate."
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Feb 25, 2024 01:48
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Bar Ran Dun posted:. These data driven motherfuckers, do they care what folks who don’t vote think? This is a good way of putting it. The flip side is, do they care about the people who always vote for the Democrat no matter what? The only voters worth persuading are the ones who might vote one way, or might vote differently, depending on how the candidates appeal to them. So it makes sense to want to be one of those voters.
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Feb 25, 2024 13:31
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Killer robot posted:The people who always vote for the Republican no matter what solved that by also voting in the primary no matter what, at all levels from local to presidency. Ot turned out to be a devastatingly powerful strategy and made them disproportionately represented at every level of government, especially above people who only vote sometimes well if they're excited enough. It's a big enough deal that it's hard to believe anyone who discounts it in strategies for the left is actually serious about wanting to shift the party. These aren't mutually exclusive strategies - very easy to say "I'll vote for the candidate I like in the primary, but I won't vote for the party in the general unless that candidate wins the primary." In 2016 and 2020 it was called "Bernie or Bust" - more generally we can call it the voter using every tool at their disposal to drive a hard bargain with the party (both party leadership and their fellow primary voters).
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Feb 25, 2024 19:50
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